Identity

"I am but clay," the sinner plead,
Who fed each vain desire.
"Not only clay," another said,
"But worse, for thou art mire."

    Oft Music, as it were some moving mighty sea,
        Bears me towards my pale
    Star: in clear space, or 'neath a vaporous canopy
        On-floating, I set sail.

    With heaving chest which strains forward, and lungs outblown,
        I climb the ridgèd steeps
    Of those high-pilèd clouds which 'thwart the night are thrown,
        Veiling its starry deeps.

    I suffer all the throes, within my quivering form,
        Of a great ship in pain,
    Now a soft wind, and now the writhings of a storm

        Upon the vasty main
    Rock me: at other times a death-like calm, the bare
        Mirror of my despair.

I have remembered beauty in the night,
Against black silences I waked to see
A shower of sunlight over Italy
And green Ravello dreaming on her height;
I have remembered music in the dark,
The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach's,
And running water singing on the rocks
When once in English woods I heard a lark.

But all remembered beauty is no more
Than a vague prelude to the thought of you,
You are the rarest soul I ever knew,
Lover of beauty, knightliest and best;
My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore,
And when I think of you, I am at rest.

Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running,
Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,
Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,
Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,
Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering,
On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting,
Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,
Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,
(That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)
Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending,
Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,
Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,
A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,
That savage trinity wa...

Houses stand stiffly next to their fences.
Let your eyes, last sparrows, flutter.
Bluebottles alight on your face.
Don't you, Kuno, feel the eternal mills -
The unfeeling one bores holes in your head.
Look once more at the moon, the mustard-pot murderer.

TO COLONEL FRANCIS EDWARD YOUNGHUSBAND

    Across the Western World, the Arabian Sea,
    The Hundred Kingdoms and the Rivers Three,
    Beyond the rampart of Himalayan snows,
    And up the road that only Rumour knows,
    Unchecked, old friend, from Devon to Thibet,
    Friendship and Memory dog your footsteps yet.

    Let not the scornful ask me what avails
    So small a pack to follow mighty trails:
    Long since I saw what difference must be
    Between a stream like you, a ditch like me.
    This drains a garden and a homely field
    Which scarce at times a living current yield;
    The other from the high lands of his birth
    Plunges through rocks and spurns the pastoral earth,
    Then settling silent to his deeper course
    Draws in ...

While the summer day is hot
You and I will loaf awhile,
Lolling in a leafy spot,
Lali of the cunning smile.

You and I have little care
How the “precious moments” pass
While we snuff the drowsy air
Rich in fragrance of the grass.

Stupid people boom or squeal
Lessons drawn from daily strife;
“Time,” they cry, “is on the wheel;
Death puts out the gas of life.

Imitate the prudent ant,
Labour like the busy bee.”
O the everlasting cant!
Loafing’s good for you and me.

Here we watch the ants that haul
Loads by weary jungle ways!
If they like it, let them crawl
Laden through the heavy blaze.

We’ve no time for moral tags;
We can hear a sleepy sound
With his yellow tucker-bags
Brother Bee is bumming round.<...

TO THOMAS SHERIDAN

SIR,
I cannot but think that we live in a bad age,
O tempora, O mores! as 'tis in the adage.
My foot was but just set out from my cathedral,
When into my hands comes a letter from the droll.
I can't pray in quiet for you and your verses;
But now let us hear what the Muse from your car says.
    Hum - excellent good - your anger was stirr'd;
Well, punners and rhymers must have the last word.
But let me advise you, when next I hear from you,
To leave off this passion which does not become you;
For we who debate on a subject important,
Must argue with calmness, or else will come short on't.
For myself, I protest, I care not a fiddle,
For a riddle and sieve, or a sieve and a riddle;
And think of the sex as you please, I'd as lieve

As when the strong stream of a wintering sea
Rolls round our coast, with bodeful breaks of storm,
And swift salt rain, and bitter wind that saith
Wild things and woeful of the White South Land
Alone with God and silence in the cold
As when this cometh, men from dripping doors
Look forth, and shudder for the mariners
Abroad, so we for absent brothers looked
In days of drought, and when the flying floods
Swept boundless; roaring down the bald, black plains
Beyond the farthest spur of western hills.

For where the Barwon cuts a rotten land,
Or lies unshaken, like a great blind creek,
Between hot mouldering banks, it came to this,
All in a time of short and thirsty sighs,
That thirty rainless months had left the pools
And grass as dry as ashes: then it was

Wild across the Breton country,
Fabled centuries ago,
Riding from the black sea border,
Came the squadrons of the snow.

Piping dread at every latch-hole,
Moaning death at every sill,
The white Yule came down in vengeance
Upon Ys, and had its will.

Walled and dreamy stood the city,
Wide and dazzling shone the sea,
When the gods set hand to smother
Ys, the pride of Brittany.

Morning drenched her towers in purple;
Light of heart were king and fool;
Fair forebode the merrymaking
Of the seven days of Yule.

Laughed the king, "Once more, my mistress,
Time and place and joy are one!"
Bade the balconies with banners
Match the splendor of the sun;

Eyes of urchins shine with silver,
And with gold the pavement ring;

In quel bel viso, ch' i' sospiro e bramo.

ON LAURA PUTTING HER HAND BEFORE HER EYES WHILE HE WAS GAZING ON HER.


    On the fair face for which I long and sigh
Mine eyes were fasten'd with desire intense.
When, to my fond thoughts, Love, in best reply,
Her honour'd hand uplifting, shut me thence.
My heart there caught--as fish a fair hook by,
Or as a young bird on a limèd fence--
For good deeds follow from example high,
To truth directed not its busied sense.
But of its one desire my vision reft,
As dreamingly, soon oped itself a way,
Which closed, its bliss imperfect had been left:
My soul between those rival glories lay,
Fill'd with a heavenly and new delight,
Whose strange surpassing sweets engross'd it quite.

MACGREGOR.

I
Sea and strand, and a lordlier land than sea-tides rolling and rising sun
Clasp and lighten in climes that brighten with day when day that was here is done,
Call aloud on their children, proud with trust that future and past are one.
Far and near from the swan's nest here the storm-birds bred of her fair white breast,
Sons whose home was the sea-wave's foam, have borne the fame of her east and west;
North and south has the storm-wind's mouth rung praise of England and England's quest.
Fame, wherever her flag flew, never forbore to fly with an equal wing:
France and Spain with their warrior train bowed down before her as thrall to king;
India knelt at her feet, and felt her sway more fruitful of life than spring.
Darkness round them as iron bound fell off from races of elder name,
Sl...

Her last words, at parting, how can I forget?
    Deep treasured thro' life, in my heart they shall stay;
Like music, whose charm in the soul lingers yet,
    When its sounds from the ear have long melted away.
Let Fortune assail me, her threatenings are vain;
    Those still-breathing words shall my talisman be,--
"Remember, in absence, in sorrow, and pain,
    "There's one heart, unchanging, that beats but for thee."

From the desert's sweet well tho' the pilgrim must hie,
    Never more of that fresh-springing fountain to taste,
He hath still of its bright drops a treasured supply,
    Whose sweetness lends life to his lips thro' the waste.
So, dark as my fate is still doomed to remain,
    These words shall my well in the wilderness be,--
"Remember, in a...

The island dreams under the dawn
And great boughs drop tranquillity;
The peahens dance on a smooth lawn,
A parrot sways upon a tree,
Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea.
Here we will moor our lonely ship
And wander ever with woven hands,
Murmuring softly lip to lip,
Along the grass, along the sands,
Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands:
How we alone of mortals are
Hid under quiet boughs apart,
While our love grows an Indian star,
A meteor of the burning heart,
One with the tide that gleams, the wings that gleam
and dart,
The heavy boughs, the burnished dove
That moans and sighs a hundred days:
How when we die our shades will rove,
When eve has hushed the feathered ways,
With vapoury footsole by the water's drowsy blaze.

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep,
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curled like a lambs back was shav’d, so I said.
Hush Tom never mind it, for when your head’s bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair

And so he was quiet. & that very night.
As Tom was a sleeping he had such a sight
That thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack
Were all of them lock’d up in coffins of black,

And by came an Angel who had a bright key
And he open’d the coffins & set them all free.
Then down a green plain leaping laughing they run
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.

I


When all the world was Mayday,
And all the skies were blue,
Young innocence made playday
Among the flowers and dew;
Then all of life was Mayday,
And clouds were none or few.


II


When all the world was Summer,
And morn shone overhead,
Love was the sweet newcomer
Who led youth forth to wed;
Then all of life was Summer,
And clouds were golden red.


III


When earth was all October,
And days were gray with mist,
On woodways, sad and sober,
Grave memory kept her tryst;
Then life was all October,
And clouds were twilight-kissed.


IV


Now all the world's December,
And night is all alarm,
Above the last dim ember
Grief bends to keep him warm;

White clouds, like thistledown at fault,
That drift through heaven's azure vault.
The sun beams down; the weedy ground
Vibrates with many an insect sound.
Blackberry-lilies in the noon
Lean to the creek with eyes a-swoon,
Where, in a shallow, silver gleams
Of minnows and a heron dreams
An old road, clouding pale the heat
Behind a slow hoof's muffled beat:
And there, hill-gazing at the skies,
A pond, within whose languor lies
A twinkle, like an eye that smiles
In thought; that with a dream beguiles
The day: a. dream of clouds that drift,
And arms the willow trees uplift,
Protectingly, as if to hide
The wildbird on its nest that cried.
Now mists that mass thesunset-dyes
Build an Arabia in the skies,
Through which the sun in pomp retires,

My father took me by the hand
And led me home again;
(He brought me in from sorrow
As you'd bring a child from rain).
The child's place at the hearth-stone,
The child's place at the board,
And the picture at the bed's head
Of wee ones wi' the Lord.

It's just a child come home he sees
To nestle at his arm;
(He brought me in from sorrow
As you'd bring a child from harm).
And of the two of us who sit
By hearth and candle-light,
There's just one hears a woman's heart
Break--breaking in the night.